Civilization V Preview

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Firaxis gives us an in-depth look at the latest sequel.

By Steve Butts

Last week we had the good fortune to visit Firaxis and get a firsthand look at Civilization V from several of the game's creators. Not counting the Colonization mod, this is the series first return to the PC after making the leap to the console and handheld platforms with Civilization Revolution. Some fans feared that the leaner (and loonier) style that Civ displayed on the consoles might bleed over into subsequent PC sequels. Based on the pre-alpha version we saw, that doesn't seem to be the case. There's a fine line between making a game easier and making it easier to play, of course, but Firaxis is committed to maintaining the depth the fans have come to expect.

The first suspicions of a market-driven compromise are usually generated by the dreaded "A" word, accessibility. While it's true that some game systems, like religion and espionage, have been removed, fears that Civilization Revolution on the console has dumbed down the gameplay of the PC sequel are unfounded. In the case of Civilization V, accessibility just means the developers want to make it easier to understand and manipulate the complexity within the game. Most of these are merely matters of convenience rather than cutting back and, with that in mind, it's clear that the interface for Civ Rev has definitely impacted the presentation in Civ V.

Basic commands and notifications have been simplified and pushed into the corners of the art deco interface. The few unit actions that players use all the time will be aligned on the lower left edge of the screen, but you can expand the list to include the whole range of possible actions. Small icons will pop up each turn to notify players of new events that might require attention and clicking on those icons will take players to the location in question. The idea is to give the player as much information they need without ever taking them out of the game itself.

The whole game has a very painted look.

Advisors are also making a return to counsel new players on particular aspects of the game but their overall tone will be much more serious than in previous versions of Civ. New players will also be saved from wasting time by having the "End turn" button transform into a "Choose production" button if a city happens to be sitting idle. Even with the streamlined interface, veteran players will still be comforted to see that the top line of the screen reveals the presence of the hardcore elements, tracking things like science and gold production, happiness, culture, resources, and even the time remaining on any Golden Ages.

One of the biggest changes to the game is the new one-unit-per-hex restriction. Previous Civ games have been dominated by the "stack of doom" where players create an unstoppable super unit by piling all of their units in a single square. That strategy is not available in Civ V, which should, the designers reason, pull combat away from the cities. Now when an invading army enters your territory, you'll want to send your spearmen and warriors and swordsmen out to fight them in the fields around your towns. Cities will automatically defend themselves now, and can benefit from increased defense based on certain structures or technologies, so you don't necessarily need to garrison a unit for defense but you can if you want to.

Because you're limited to just one unit per hex, battles have the potential to be much more tactical, both with regard to the placement of your units and geographical obstacles. We saw a few battles that highlighted the significance of the new system. In one, two groups of units were facing off against each other around a one-hex lake. An archer unit was able to fire at enemy units on the far side of the lake and stay protected from melee attack by two allied units on either side. In another battle, a small group of powerful units were able to hold off a much larger attacking army in a narrow mountain pass. Because the attacker could only bring one unit into the fight at a time, the defender was able to eliminate the numerical disadvantage.

It's all worth it once you start shooting flaming arrows at cities.

Civ fans are already very familiar with the terrain-based combat modifiers (crossing rivers, holding hills, etc.) and appropriate unit match ups. Adding in the additional burden of managing an army spread out over a large area just means doing it all on a different scale and making sure that your ranged units stay clear of melee. Fortunately, the game will allow adjacent allied units to swap positions, so you can keep fresh troops engaged with the enemy and rescue your ranged units from contact with melee fighters.

As fun as they are, battles are just the basic components of victory and without a clear direction you can win every fight and still lose the game. A lot of effort is being made to ensure that the AI in Civilization V behaves in a way that makes sense. As we watched a test game play out in front of us, AI programmer Ed Beach explained the way the AI uses subsystems to create and execute its strategies. At the lowest level, the tactical AI uses the forces at hand to win a battle on a local scale. One step up from that, the operational AI picks which battles to fight and makes sure that the necessary forces are available. Moving even higher, the strategic AI manages the empire as a whole, focusing on where to build cities and what to do with them.

At the top of the ladder is the grand strategic AI, which decides how to win the game. If the grand strategic AI decides to go for a conquest victory, the strategic AI will build the infrastructure needed to wage war and the operational and tactical AIs will choose and fight the battles. That way the tactical AI won't be fighting battles merely for the sake of fighting battles, but because those battles are relevant in the grand strategic AI's big picture. In the case of the conquest victory, the AI will be aiming to capture the other civ's capitals, which is all that's needed for a military victory this time.

Civilization V introduces players to an entirely new combat system, deeper diplomatic interactions and a cavalcade of expanded features that deliver a fully immersive experience providing hours of entertainment as players build and defend their empire.